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Landreth, Catherine (1899-1995)

New Zealand and United States of America, 1920s-1960s

By Jenny Collins PhD, UNITEC Institute of Technology. Posted .

Catherine Landreth is one of a small group of women who used their degree in household science as a springboard to post-graduate studies and an international academic career. Although she maintained links with household science throughout her professional life, it is Landreth’s significance as a researcher, academic and professional in the area of child development and early childhood education for which she will be remembered.… Continue Reading »

Technical secondary schools

Victoria, Australia, 1910-2015

By Lesley Preston, PhD, Independent scholar. Posted .

The establishment of post-elementary technical schools in Australian states in the early twentieth century was one of several responses to the growing pressure to provide some form of universal secondary education for all adolescents. The Australian state, Victoria, constructed a long-lasting system of such schools that distinguished public education in that state from elsewhere.… Continue Reading »

Convict and emancipist teachers

New South Wales, 1789-1830

By Geoffrey Burkhardt, Ph.D., Australian National Museum of Education. Posted .

Between 1789 and 1830 approximately half of the teachers who taught in the schools of the colony of New South Wales arrived as convicts. This entry concerning the use of convicts as teachers in early colonial schools asks why there was a need for school teachers in what was founded as a penal colony.… Continue Reading »

Knibbs and Turner Commission and Reports

New South Wales, 1900-1914

By Dorothy Kass, Ph.D., Macquarie University. Posted .

The Commission on Primary, Secondary, Technical, and Other Branches of Education was appointed in New South Wales in early 1902. Commissioners George Handley Knibbs, University lecturer, and John William Turner, Headmaster of Fort Street Model School, travelled widely in Europe and America enquiring into education for the purpose of reforming education in New South Wales.… Continue Reading »

Correspondence School, Blackfriars

New South Wales, 1916-1967

By John Ramsland, University of Newcastle. Posted .

The problem of how to educate young people in sparsely settled and remote locations has been with the Australian colonies, territories and states for more than two centuries. Successive solutions included subsidised, provisional, part-time and travelling schools, as well as the delivery of curricula by means that have responded to changing information technologies.… Continue Reading »

Milner, Frank

New Zealand, 1875-1944

By Gregory Lee and Howard Lee, University of Canterbury, Massey University. Posted .

Among the many New Zealand male and female secondary school principals who served their respective institutions and communities dutifully throughout the twentieth century were a small number of school leaders whose educational and societal contributions were, and are, especially noteworthy. Frank Milner features prominently within their ranks. His educational work has been—and remains—significant for several reasons.… Continue Reading »

Junior teachers (2)

South Australia, 1936-1945

By Anthony McGuire, PhD. Posted .

Teacher preparation in Australia has a complex history. The balance between school-based and college or university-based preparation tends to be rethought in every generation. It took until well into the twentieth century for ill-managed, often exploitative, pupil-teacher and junior teacher preparation schemes to be replaced by arguably superior forms of teacher training and teacher education.… Continue Reading »

Somerset, Gwen

New Zealand, 1894-1988

By Suzanne Manning, MEd, University of Auckland. Posted .

Gwen Somerset was a well-known New Zealand educationalist in adult and early childhood education. The daughter of Clara Buckingham and Frederick Alley, Gwen was born in 1894 in Canterbury. She trained as a primary school teacher as well as studying at Canterbury College (now the University of Canterbury), and spent almost 17 years as Infant Mistress at Oxford, a small rural town in Canterbury.… Continue Reading »

Adolescence and the school

Australia, 1880-2014

By Craig Campbell, PhD DipEd, University of Sydney. Posted .

The words, adolescent and adolescence came into scientific and popular use at the beginning of the twentieth century. They were assisted by the publication in 1904 of G. Stanley Hall’s remarkable study, Adolescence: Its psychology and its relations to physiology, anthropology, sociology, sex, crime, religion and education. This book, though American, was noticed in Australia.… Continue Reading »

Historiography

Australia, 1960-2020

By Craig Campbell, PhD DipEd, University of Sydney. Posted .

Historiography encompasses the kinds of research, writing and analysis that historians engage for their purposes. Individual historians may be discussed in terms of their historiographical influence and contribution, but more often the study of historiography concerns broader patterns of writing and analysis. The historiography of educational research and writing in Australia has always been responsive to international trends.… Continue Reading »